Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney as we continue our investigation here of mystery/detective/crime fighting stories as we resurrect Classic Shorts Showcase as we look at one of the shorts from the Alice Comedies. The Alice Comedies were a series of shorts that saw a little girl enter a cartoon world and would interact with the characters there. And a certain Disney baddie got in his start in these comedies as the earliest known version of Pete can be seen in these shorts. Keep in mind, that these shorts predate the creation of Mickey Mouse, and even that of Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. The short that we are looking at today is from 1926 and features the second Alice, Margie Gay. Who played Alice from 1925-1927. This short along with many other Alice Comedies is included on the Walt Disney Treasures DVD, Disney Rarities: Celebrated Shorts 1920s - 1950s .
I'll admit right here that this is the first Alice Comedy that I have watched. I know I know, that's a part of Disney history that I need to be more familiar with. I'll say right now, that I highly enjoyed this short and it got surprisingly dark in areas. With that outta the way, let's take a look at Alice's Mysterious Mystery.
The Plot
We open on Pete & one of his rat henchmen tricking poor innocent puppies that happen to be school children into thinking that he is a dog catcher and rounds them all up in a school and we soon learn why, they are being rounded up as Pete is taking them to a sausage factory to make sausage out of these poor little puppies. Yeesh, and I thought the donkey scene in Pinocchio was nightmare inducing.
Alice and Julius, her cat friend are on the case and we get one of my favorite moments of the short.
As they overhear one of the pups screaming for it's life. And they follow Pete into the city, where we see him trapping more pups by using a beautiful female dog to lure them into the sausage factory.
And they are taken down a chute to where they will separated by what grades of meat, they'll be.
Well.... that got dark. Here have a picture of Fluttershy being cute.
We even see one pup pleading for his life as he is led to the death chamber. Yeah, it's actually called that. And well, we doesn't make it out alive as the next time we see him, he's now links. Alice and Julius finally catch up to our villains and Julius seeing what is going on decides to release the pups and kicks Pete down the chute that leads into the factory.
Over on the Internet Animation Database, there is some discussion about who did most of the heavy work on this particular short with a few saying that this seems like an Ub Iwerks thing as Ub when let loose would go out there with dark humor. And yeah, this short got really dark. Granted, it's enjoyable but not what I was expecting from something called Alice's Mysterious Mystery.
Characters
Main Characters
Alice played by Margie Gay
Alice didn't seem to do much but she did put in some effort here and there to help save the pups but really, it was mostly Julius who did most of the heavy lifting.
Julius
Okay, this must've been the design for cats during this time period but looking at Julius, all I could think of was Felix The Cat. Still, Julius proved to be the resourceful and smart one as he was the one that ended up saving the day.
Villain
Pete
Sweet Christmas, Pete went full on dark in this short. And the craziest part about it is that he just seemed to be doing it because... well because he could. That's creepy. Honestly, when you stop to think about this short, it's up there with the WWII Chicken Little short as one of the darkest things that has ever been covered on Classic Shorts Showcase.
My Final Thoughts
This short is good but really dark. That's not a turnoff but I was not expecting what I got with this short. Join me next time for the first Music Fridays of this event as we look at songs from Dick Tracy
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